


Tribute

by stuito55 (annabeth)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Essays, Gen, Lokomotiv plane crash, Not!Fic, Speculative fiction, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 15:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth/pseuds/stuito55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reflections on grief after the Lokomotiv plane crash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tribute

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little unclassifiable thing I wrote after the Lokomotiv plane crash on Sept. 7, 2011. It's not really fic, it's not really an essay, it's kind of like speculative fiction I guess. There is obviously talk of death in this, including people I used to know.

When you wake up, and the first thing that happens is a tightening in your chest, a breath squeezed in your lungs that you can't let out—that's the grief, punishing you.

Maybe you didn't know him. Maybe you didn't know any of the victims. But a tragedy has happened here. With it, there is only sadness, the kind that makes your gut tremble.

Read the news. Watch the tribute videos, if you can. Remember his family; the families of all those that perished.

Sit silently, then lie back on your pillow with your hands above your head, listening to the silence and knowing, deep in your heart, that this is an irrevocable truth that will never change.

Three days later and you still can't believe it. Three days and you've been thinking about him quite often; though, nowhere near as much as his widow and children must be thinking of him.

Or think of the others. The other fathers, husbands. All of them gone, snuffed out in an instant in an unimaginable tragedy. It's still hard to breathe. You still grieve.

And deep down you wonder: how can I feel this sad over someone I never knew? How has this burrowed into my chest and taken hold, and what can I do?

But of course, there's nothing. You can't change what happened. You don't have enough experience with death, either; you don't understand it, like a child. Still questioning. When will he come back?

But you know he won't be coming back. You know that what happened, happened, and asking _why_ over and over won't help you. There's no way to know _why_ these things happen.

So sit in your house and be happy it didn't touch you personally. Be glad that you can take a step back, and hold your feelings in your hand like a precious soap bubble. You didn't know him. You don't have to suffer this forever, and it's not for you to say, _it hurts_ , because you didn't know him, right?

For you, this is a transient set of emotions. But for them... they will never forget.

And yet: you will never forget, either.

This is a day that will be marked. A life that will not pass out of this world uncelebrated.

Lie down to go to sleep, and feel the breath loosen in your chest.

But remember: this is not the first time. Remember Susan, who died on your birthday, whom you loved. Remember Corinne, who suffered endlessly before she died, and whom you still miss.

Remember the plane crash, and try to make sense of something insensible. Go to sleep, but know that for the next while, when you wake up, that grief will be there, pressing on your chest, reminding you.

But that's how it should be. These people, even if you did not know them, they should not go unremembered.


End file.
